Tag: Cooperation

In social psychology we’re interested in how group identity and group processes impact on individual experience and behaviour. Until now the field has focused largely on how people perceive groups and identity; and has not worried too much about the structure of social connections. Network structure , however, makes a big difference to social outcomes at collective levels and we’re now getting tools and models to start to make sense of it all.

Allen and colleagues (2017) have recently shown that cooperation is more likely to emerge in networks with fewer but stronger ties at local levels than in networks with more (but weaker) connections. This is theoretically exciting, as it shows that it is possible and fruitful to analyze social psychological constructs in relation to network structure.

It’s also deeply concerning, since the digital platforms that mediate more and more of our social relationships (Twitter; Facebook; Instagram) are cultivating social networks with large numbers of weak ties — exactly the kinds of relationships that, according to Allen et al., will result in less cooperative networks at large scales.

Counterintuitively, if we want more cooperative societies we might need to spend less time on our phones and see fewer people more often.

• the development of a new Virtual Interaction APPlication (VIAPPL) that allows experiments in a context that allows interaction and social network analysis of emergent relationships. See www.viappl.org

•developing a network theory of attitudes based on multilayer networks using agent-based simulations and experiments using VIAPPL

• qualitative exploration of how men and women construct gender identities in “critical moments” of their lives such as dates, weddings, job interviews, having children and retiring.